Method for increasing digital data throughput over telephone lines

Abstract

Transmission of digital data over existing telephone networks is limited by the data bit rate capacity of the telephone lines. This limitation is inherent in the nature of the existing communication lines e.g. copper wires and in the switching circuits that make the connections between telephone subscribers. Digital data may be transmitted over existing telephone lines but due to throughput limitation such transmission is exceedingly slow. A method is provided whereby a digital data file may be transmitted over a plurality of telephone lines simultaneously to increase the throughput and thus greatly increase the speed at which a given digital data file may be transmitted. The method does not require modification nor enhancement to the existing telephone network. The method consists of segregating the data file into smaller blocks of data, sequentially addressing such blocks and transmitting the blocks of data individually and concurrently over a plurality of telephone lines, with each successive block of data being sent over the next to be available telephone lines until all the blocks of data have been transmitted. At the receiving end the sequentially labeled blocks of data are reassembled to form a copy of the original digital data file.

What is claimed is: 
     
       1. A method for increasing the throughput of digital data transmission over existing telephone lines utilizing computers at the sending and receiving ends, comprising: a sending computer with a plurality of serial ports each of which serial port is connected to a modem said modem connected to a telephone line a receiving computer with a plurality of serial ports each of which serial port is connected to a modem and said modem connected to a telephone line, the number of said receiving computer's serial ports, modems, and telephone lines being at least equal to the number of said serial ports, modems and telephone lines in the sending computer;   means for segmenting the data file into blocks equal to the number of actual serial ports available to the sending and receiving computers and labeling said blocks of data in a sequential order;   means for activating the transmission of said individual data blocks by the separate modems attached to the serial ports and monitoring the transmission of said data blocks, said transmissions being done concurrently, and   means for reconstituting the sequentially labeled segmented data blocks into one data file in the proper sequence at the receiving computer.